Janice Johnson - Dead Wrong

Beer went down the wrong way. Still choking, he gasped, “What?”

“She looked scared, Will.”

Voice thick with fear of a different kind, fear that she was right and he was wrong, Will said, “She’s jumping to conclusions.”

“She’s looking at all the options. She was up at the Butte talking to Doug.”

“And?”

“He worked Wednesday night. He told me after he talked to her that he had been with other people until two in the morning or so. And his roommate swears he never left the condo.”

Will set down the bottle on the counter so hard it clunked. “This has to do with Mendoza.”

“But what?”

“Somebody is trying to get him off. To make everyone think Gilly’s killer is still out there.”

Travis would have made a hell of a lawyer. Mild enough to catch you off guard, he could still corner you. “Not many people are sick enough to kill like that. A man would have to enjoy it. You and I are good friends. I’d do a hell of a lot for you. But rape and murder? Nah.”

Savagely, not wanting to hear the logic, Will said, “You’ve been talking to my father.”

“You know better than that.”

Will closed his eyes. Travis had stuck with him through the worst. And now he was being a jackass.

“Yeah. I know better. I’m sorry.”

Travis just shook his head. “No need. Are you going to be able to start work with this hanging over you?”

“Yeah.” Tension arced through him as if live wires were sparking. “I need to be busy. What am I supposed to do? Sit here and watch soap operas while I wonder if some other woman is being stalked?”

Relentless in his own way, Travis said, “If this guy stalked Amy, then that means he chose her. It had to be her. Why?”

“I don’t know!” Will all but shouted. He paced a couple of steps, turned back, bounced his fist on the counter. “I don’t know. I was using a figure of speech. Probably nobody is being stalked. Chances are the killer just grabbed Amy because she was available…”

“Has your mom figured out where she was snatched from?”

“Not as far as I know.”

“Then maybe she wasn’t all that available.” Travis still leaned against the edge of the counter, seemingly relaxed, but his eyes were both watchful and compassionate. “You know, maybe the guy picked her. Maybe he had to plan how to lure her to him.”

“Which brings us back to me.” Will swore under his breath. “What did you tell her?”

“Her?”

“My mother.”

“That I couldn’t think of anyone who hates your guts.”

“That’s the kind of thing I’d know.”

Travis gestured with the beer bottle. “I’m not so sure. If somebody is targeting women because you loved them, he hates you bad. It’s not like this guy is telling the world what an asshole Will Patton is. This is something that eats at him. Takes the stomach lining, then his soul.”

“I’ve put people away…”

“But you hadn’t, back when Gilly was killed.”

“Mendoza…”

“We’re just supposing.”

“That he didn’t kill her.”

“Or that somebody, somehow, put him up to it. Maybe it took that somebody six years to work up the nerve to do the dirty work himself.”

Will wanted to reject a suggestion so unlikely, but he’d spent enough years in the D.A.’s office to know anything was possible.

“Do you remember that guy who set the fires because he blamed my grandfather for his mom’s death?”

Travis accepted the seeming non sequitor. “I remember.”

The first fire had been set inside a pickup truck chosen because it looked exactly like Police Chief Ed Patton’s. The worst was Aunt Abby’s townhouse. She’d barely escaped with her life. Even Will, just sixteen, had been targeted. His bike, parked outside the grocery store, had been squirted with gasoline and set afire.

He remembered how he’d felt, knowing someone had been watching him, following him, hating him. For a while, until they caught the guy, Will had lived with the heightened perceptions of a soldier in a war zone. He’d searched the faces of people in line at the store or sitting in the bleachers at basketball games, been painfully conscious of anyone walking behind him, of every driver behind the wheel of an approaching car. It was like looking through a magnifying glass, so that his vision was both abnormally sharp and a little skewed. He hadn’t trusted that anything was as it seemed.

If he bought into this theory, he would once again feel like an infantryman walking down the street in Fallujah and realizing he’d forgotten to put on his body armor. The smiles of old friends would look like the veiled faces of Iraqi women whose dark eyes were unreadable to that soldier.

Even with friends, he’d have to wonder what he wasn’t seeing, what he might have done to provoke hatred so virulent.

He didn’t want to revisit that kind of paranoia. Every cell in his body rejected the idea that someone he knew, maybe even someone he’d gone to school with, could do something so hideous.

He unclenched his jaw. “You’re reaching. All of you are reaching. This doesn’t have anything to do with me. It has to do with that sick bastard who murdered Gilly, may he rot in prison until the gates of hell open for him.”

“You may be right.” Travis opened the refrigerator and handed Will another beer as if it were an olive branch. “Let’s just hope we find out before another woman gets murdered.”

“Amen to that,” Will agreed, and popped the lid from the bottle. Goddamn it, but his hand was still shaking.

THE ONLY MAXIMUM SECURITY prison in Oregon, the penitentiary complex in Salem was sprawling and impressive. Trina had never had reason to visit it before. Even at the county jail, she didn’t like hearing metal doors closing behind her. The idea of being shut in forever gave her the willies. Today, she felt uneasy from the moment she drove in the gates.

She showed her credentials and surrendered her weapon, then allowed herself to be escorted to a glassed-in visitor room, furnished only with a single wood table in the middle and two chairs. Grateful she’d been allowed a “contact” visit and wouldn’t have to attempt to interview Ricardo Mendoza through a telephone and thick glass, she set the tape recorder and her notebook on the table. Then, while waiting for him to be brought, she prowled the room. Trina prayed that Lieutenant Patton was right and he’d be eager to talk to her. She’d feel like a failure if she had to go back and admit she couldn’t get him to open up.

A guard escorted a handcuffed inmate past the windows looking into the hall. The inmate shuffled with head bent, lank blond hair shielding his face. A moment later, a man and woman passed, both carrying briefcases and wearing dark suits. Attorneys.

Trina wondered if Will Patton had come here to see inmates when he was an assistant D.A. in Portland. She’d heard that he was a hotshot there, quickly advancing from prosecuting misdemeanors and doing prelims to Domestic Violence and then Major Crimes. Supposedly he hadn’t lost a trial.

So why on earth would he quit and take a job in Butte County, where half a dozen assistant D.A.s handled the entire caseload? Did he think he could make it to District Attorney faster on his own home turf? Most D.A.s seemed to end up being appointed to the bench. Maybe he wanted to be a judge so bad, he’d grabbed for the fastest route.

Or maybe something had gone wrong and his standing had sunk. Will Patton, she suspected, wasn’t the man to hang his head and accept a demotion to some unit like Consumer Protection or Juvenile Crime. He might have to handle those cases in Butte County—all the D.A.s did—but he’d also get a shot at the big cases. The headliners. The ones that would put his face on the nightly news.